Billie Joe Armstrong's face wreathed in smiles Saturday as he held up a bright red sweatshirt tossed onstage from the front row. John Swett. "That's the high school I went to in Crockett," said the East Bay-bred vocalist for punk rock champions Green Day.

"No," he corrected himself. "That's one of the high schools I went to. I didn't graduate from any of 'em, and Ma, look at me now."

Armstrong can be forgiven for a tiny boast about his lack of education. He was headlining a sold-out show at SBC Park, the biggest rock concert so far this year, before a hometown crowd of 42,000 undoubtedly full of family and friends. Armstrong recollected playing as a teenager at the Teen Center in Davis and ticked off the names of the long-gone bands who appeared on the same bills as if it all happened last week instead of 17 years ago.

But the punk rock trio from the remote reaches of Contra Costa County has climbed on top of the rock world. With the release last year of "American Idiot," Green Day has become the rock band of the moment, the only group to ascend to stadiums in years. What makes it all the more amazing is that the band has accomplished this without making any obvious accommodations to the pop charts.

The multiplatinum success of "American Idiot" brought a much younger demographic into the band's camp. SBC Park was filled with young teens and even younger fans, with their parents. Punk rock as family entertainment? There's something so terribly wrong with that, yet, at the same time, something so very right.

Not that Armstrong manicured his stage demeanor for the huge preteen contingent in the house. He liberally sprayed his favorite f-word and gave a goofy, mischievous grin as he reached into his pants at one point in the proceedings.

Looking almost like a cartoon punk rocker -- his eyes framed in Alice Cooper's eyeliner , his black hair a perfect mess, his red-striped tie stuffed military style into his black shirt -- he wore an armband around his shoulder that read "RAGE." He ran from left field to right field and back again on virtually every number, exhorting the crowd at every opportunity. He has become a master of the grand gesture, the overstated pose, and when he curls up his mouth and pops his eyes, Armstrong gives some of the best rock face in the business.

Four 40-foot-tall video screens cradled the back of the stage, with computerized lights flashing in between. The band used more fireworks than Journey or Kiss ever did, blowing off flash pots during virtually every number and ending the concert with a display that rivaled a small town Fourth of July. Extra lighting sent beams into the grandstands and the heavens.

Green Day bassist Mike Dirnt held down the grooves with drummer Tre Cool, vamping steadily while Armstrong ranted and raced around the giant stage. Second guitarist Jason White added rhythm and leads, allowing Armstrong to dispense entirely with his instrument at points. A two-man horn section added some cacophony to the rumbling, driving sound, and Jason Freese played not only saxophone and trombone, but accordion, too (he is also the extraordinary drummer in the band A Perfect Circle).

The band's music has grown far beyond the relative provincial confines of punk. "Wake Me Up When September Ends" was a Beatles-esque ballad that had cigarette lighters flickering across the stadium. Some of the band's midtempo songs recalled middle-period Stones more than Sex Pistols, and the band returned for an encore with Queen's "We Are the Champions," although the Ramones hyperdrive still chugs through the center of many of the band's best pieces. Even when the band entertained a more generic punk rock sound, there was always an element of classicism to Green Day.

Green Day has taken punk rock places it has never gone, like the centerfield of SBC Park. It is all part of the mainstreaming of punk culture that put a Hot Topic boutique in every mall in the country. But while Green Day broke through with the band's major label debut, "Dookie," writing anthems about masturbation and boredom, "American Idiot" is a frankly political tract, and Armstrong spared no invectives in lacerating President Bush from the stage. These gentlemen are nobody's cookie-cutter punks.